Damon West: How to Escape a Life Sentence | E120
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Here's the message. Go and define what a bad day looks like, right? Let's define what a bad day is. A bad day, let's say it's when a marriage fails, a job gets lost, you know. Maybe you fail a class, you're in your college, you had a bad grade, whatever. Someone dies, something happens to your kids, something happens to your pet. These are bad days. Let's define what a bad day looks like. Anytime you think you're having a bad day, ask yourself, is it really a bad day? Is it one of those days, right?

Because if it's not one of those days, then my day is just not that great. And I can turn this thing around pretty quickly, right? I just got to change the way I think about the day in front of me. When I'm in the room that night at Houston, Texas, I had survived prison. I've been through something way worse than this. But I took the time to apply the perspective because if I don't apply the perspective that night, the odds of me succeeding is so daunting. I'm going to walk out that room and listen to the voice of fear in my head.

But I stopped and I applied the procedure. I'm like, Damon, this isn't a bad day. Even if this guy tells you no, it's just a no. It doesn't hurt. It's not like you're getting beat up in the day room again. Define what your bad days look like and compare your days to those days. So you survive in prison. You got respect from, you know, you got props from whites and blacks. How did eventually you get paroled when you had 65 years in prison? So...

Here's where I start becoming the coffee bean. I'm having, I'm struggling. This is after the thing with blackjack and all that. I'm in my cell one night and I haven't shared with Carlos the story of the coffee bean. Carlos is a very significant person. And I tell people, before I tell you this story, this is what I tell people a lot when I'm speaking to audiences. The messengers in life can come from anywhere.

They won't look like you, they won't come from the same background as you, they don't have the same experiences as you. But the trick is you have to be receptive to all of life's messengers to get all the messages in life, right? And if you close yourself off to somebody because they don't look like you, they're not the same religion as you, they don't come from the same part of America as you, you'll miss the most important lessons and some of the best friendships, right? So Carlos, this little bank robber there, Carlos has got 99 years for a bunch of bank jobs. Super nice guy, though. Real good guy. Yeah.

I get it. Just put a gun in people's faces, but he's a nice dude. But he's a good guy now, right? So when I meet him, he's a really good guy. And you got to make friends somewhere, right? So Carlos is my buddy. And I told him, man, I'm struggling. I can't do it. I don't know if I can make it through here. I don't want to become an egg. At night in our cell, I told Carlos the story of the coffee bean. First time I've ever shared it with someone else.

And man, Carlos is excited, man. He's a real animated little guy. He's like, man, I love this coffee bean story. He said, but you're right. You're no coffee bean. He said, honestly, you'll never be a coffee bean. I got in Carlos' face, man. That's how aggravated I am at this point in life. What do you mean? Who are you, the coffee bean man? Why can't I be a coffee bean, right? I'm stuttering. I'm so mad at him. And he's laughing at me. He's like, it's because of the way you think. He said, your thoughts are everything. He said, your problem is you think prison is a punishment.

when you should be thinking prison is an opportunity. This is the first time someone had ever told me this could be an opportunity, right? Think about the adversity I'm sitting in, man. I just started serving a fresh life sentence in one of Texas' toughest prisons. Fought for two months for my right to exist. I fought the guy off in the shower that's going to rape me. And this little bank robber's telling me this could be a good thing? I'm like, make this—I can't wrap my brain around what you're saying.

He said, "This is your opportunity, West. Your opportunity to work on yourself 24 hours a day and seven days a week. You can become the best version of yourself possible while you're here." And it lights out that night. We're in our bunks. The guard counts our cell. He walks off. He peeked his head down from the top bunk. He said, "Psst, West. What are you prepared to do tomorrow with your opportunity?" This little dude refused to call prison a punishment, Randall, and God put him in a cell with me. Anybody can be the messenger in life, right?

The next morning I wake up, my feet hit the cold concrete floor of the prison cell. I look up at the ceiling. I'm like, all right, God, thanks for this opportunity.

I don't believe it, Randall, but I took action that day in prison. The next day I started taking action. And then every day after that, I started taking action in my life. And that's what's required of everybody in life. Taking action, right? Because no one can take your action for you. You got to go out there and put in your own work in life. No one can put in your work for you. I got up every day in a dungeon, man, a dungeon. Days became weeks, weeks became months, months became years. But I cracked the code on how to be a coffee bean, right?

That's how I did it. That's how the transformation was so complete. I started thinking about these rules of being a coffee bean. And I got into program recovery. That's when I get into 12 steps, right? 2011, I go to my first AA meeting. I don't speak for AA. So these AA hardcore people that are listening to this, I'm not saying I speak for AA. It's the 12-step program recovery I happen to go to, right? And I'll do this the rest of my life because you don't ever get well. You can get better, but not well.

So I start going to my 12-step meetings. I start understanding my disease of addiction. I learned a better way to think, right? And in the 12 steps, we learned how to work through the baggage in our life. We learned how to figure out how to keep our side of the street clean. We started cleaning our side of the street for the first time. You start learning about things like relationships. Relationships aren't just built around me. There's another person in every relationship. And relationships are the most important thing in life, right?

But I started working on these ways of being a coffee bean. You know, positive body language. When I was in county jail, Muhammad told me, he said, you'll either infect a room that you walk into with your negative energy or you affect the room with positive energy. You can infect or affect every room you're in, right? And so he told me, use your body language in a positive way. So I started using it. My smile was changing the prison around me. I started changing. One of the things the parole board saw is they saw that this one guy changes the prison, right?

And people ask me all the time when I'm at presentations, how did you change the prison? One of the things I got these guys to believe in is the idea of community. A community can only exist if everybody in the community is putting in the community, right? When I showed these guys, hey, if we could all come to the table and share our talents with everybody else, what kind of community could we have?

So now you got Damon West leading the cause. Okay, I've been to college. I can teach guys how to read, how to write. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be a tutor in here for the guys that want to get their GED. Come see me. I'll teach you how to read and write, do mathematics, right? Other guys over here, you can do drawings and stuff like that. This guy over here doesn't have any money, but he wants to send a Christmas card home to his family. Can you make him a Christmas card? Now we're part of a community. Everybody's pitching in.

I noticed that these guys, they would watch, the news was really big in prison, Randall. Those TVs are everything in there. All these guys would watch the news. You want to know what's going on in the free world, right? But every time the stock report would come on, and we'd talk with the Dow, the S&P and all that, every guy would kind of look down at the ground, they'd kick their feet. They didn't know what it was. No one had ever told them. So I'd go up in front of the TV one day, I'm like, hey, do y'all know what they're talking about up there? I thought I was going to get in a fight. Like, what are you trying to make fun of us, white boy? No, but I can teach you all about that because I used to be a broker.

I taught these guys about the stock market in there. Man, these guys were running their own black market stock market with stuff off the commissary, man. They jumped in. What I found out, too, about prison is there's some guys in prison that are great businessmen. They can be a great business person, right? I mean, you take a drug dealer, somebody that can take a quantity of a drug, break it up in a bunch of different baggies, different quantities, and they know which baggie they get to that they break even. They know which baggie they're going to get to that they can buy more supply, double and triple their supply, double and triple their supply.

They're running a business. It's just a bad business, but they're running a business. I found a way to tap into the better part of their angels and get them to be a part of a community and believe in themselves. I tell them those words too. Those four words that you usually hear from a coach or a teacher, tell them, I believe in you.

I believe in you. The four most powerful words in the English language are, I believe in you. I believe in you. Man, it transformed those guys. When I go to prisons now to deal with my class and I go to prisons and talk over America, I make sure they hear those words from me. I believe in you because that matters. Now someone else believes in me. And Randall, you're talking about...

You know, when I was in prison, I was a very sober observer. Prison was like living in a giant sociological petri dish, right? I mean, you're in a lab experiment every day, and the rules can change. Whatever pod you live in, whoever has the power in there, whatever gang is in control, that's the rules you live by. So I was starting observing what are the factors that kind of decide who goes to prison, right? I identified five. Here's the five variables that I think kind of tells us who's going to have negative interaction with the criminal justice system. Poverty.

Poverty was the biggest factor in prison. Most people in prison come from a very impoverished background. Lack of an education was the second biggest. The average education in prison was seventh or eighth grade at the most. Lack of a family unit was the next biggest. Not a lot of nuclear families coming out of prison. I was an anomaly for this, by the way, Randall.

A lot of these people came from a single parent home. If they were lucky, that single parent was involved in their lives. I knew a guy in prison that his mother used to burn him every day with cigarettes if he didn't snatch enough purses when he was seven years old. Imagine that, man. That's your mother. That's going to take some trauma healing to fix that person, right? The next variable was race. I got into prison and I saw, man, what happened in America. White people make up the majority of America, right?

Black people, black men specifically, black men, they make up about 6.5% of our entire American population. Black people make up 13%. Black men are about 6.5%. Black men were about 50% of the prison population when I got in there. And I'm like, how is 6.5% of the population committing 50% of the crime? Well, they're not, right? That's the whole point.

But the numbers were just reversed. Blacks had the main numbers, Hispanics had the next numbers, and then whites had the lowest numbers in prison. So poverty, I mean, so race was the fourth biggest variable that you deal with in there. And the fifth variable was substance abuse slash mental health. That's the variable was mine. I was the substance abuse guy. 80% of the people in prison have substance abuse issues. 80%. And when I learned this number when I was in prison, I started going to my recovery meetings and

And the first meeting I went to in recovery, I was like, man, I'm excited. I'm going to AANA. And there's 3,000 people in this unit. It's a big unit. It's like a city that you live in, right? And I'm thinking to myself, man, if 80% of the people in here have substance abuse issues, we could potentially have 2,400 people at a meeting. I mean, we don't have enough guards for that. What room are we going to do this in?

I got to the Chapel of Hope. That's where we held our meetings the next day. And I found out why it was held in the chapel. 50 guys out of 2,400 that should have been there, 50 guys were in that room. That's when I knew it was in the right room, right? When you're in the room that people voluntarily go to because they want to find a better way of living, that was the right room. So all these factors, Randall, of understanding servant leadership, understanding about the things you do and do not control, there are only four things you can control.

How does it actually work when you get paroled? How does it actually work when you learn you're getting paroled? Is it a letter? Is it right then and there we said, okay, you got it. And then what was the exact feeling that you were thinking when you walked out of the prison grounds and like you see on the movies? Yeah, great question. So 2015, now we're seven years into this prison sentence.

I work in the chapel. The chaplain comes in. His name is Chaplain Vance. I don't know if he's still alive now. Chaplain Vance comes in. He's really excited that day. He said, Wes, security's looking for you. They just called you down on the radio. The parole board is here to see you. Randall, I know I'm up for parole, brother. No notice that day. I don't know what day they're going to come see me, but when you're in the review process for parole, they can come anytime they want. Now, remember, I got sentenced to life in prison. At seven years, I'm about to see parole for the first time.

Non-aggravated non-violent guy. I'd never heard anybody ran. I can't stress that enough the reason why they let me out Part of it is because I'm not a violent guy, but the parole board said that day to see me He said you got to go you gotta go visit with him. It's gonna be fine. I

So I go there. The lady for parole calls me in. She said, have a seat, Mr. West. She said, sit down. There's three people, five people? One. One person has your face. She's a parole representative. Now, she's not a voter. Okay. What this parole representative is going to do, she's going to assess you and interview you, and she's going to send your file to the lead voter for parole. On a parole voting panel, there's three people. You've got to get two of the three votes. The lead voter is who you really got to get, right? Because the second voter is going to kind of vote with the lead voter, right? That's what you think in your mind. Right.

So I go in there that day with the parole representative, this lady from parole. Have a seat, Mr. West. She's got my criminal file in front of her. It's called your jacket. My jacket's about this thick. It's your life story. It's every arrest, every felony. And she's flipping through the pages of my jacket for about 20 seconds. She slammed it shut. She pushes the file away. She said, Mr. West, I came here today to ask you one question for parole. That's it. It's a one-question test. The answer to my question is going to determine whether or not you go home and stay in this prison.

But the answer to my question is not in the file, but the guy I'm reading about who committed all those crimes in Dallas all those years ago. She said, we don't get to see a lot of people like you come through our system. I'm going to be honest with you because you had it all. She said you had every advantage, every privilege, every opportunity over everybody else your entire life. She said you're the definition of a privileged person in America. She said, but you gave away all your privileges. You became a drug addict. You became a criminal. You became a thief. A jury in Dallas gave you life in prison for the things you did.

She said, your fall from grace may be the most spectacular fall from grace I've ever seen doing Spurl stuff. You had it all.

But you changed yourself inside this prison, Mr. West. She said, there's no doubt about the change you made to yourself. She said, no one's doubting that today. Who's telling her that, by the way? Is she telling the warden? Oh, the warden's... Everybody's in this file talking about you. Now, you can put together this thing. That's a good question. You can put together this thing for your first parole interview called a parole packet. You put it together. I put it together. My mom and I put it together. I'd call my mom on the phone. This is what I want to put in my packet. I'd write out stuff. I'm in prison this whole time.

I'm fighting my case, by the way. That appeal I told you about earlier with Dustin and all that, I'm putting my appeal together. I wrote my own appeal. I got the attention from all these lawyers in Texas. In fact, this one law firm in Beaumont told me while I'm in prison, man, you did this great legal work for a guy who's never been to law school. If you ever get out of prison, come see us. We've got a job for you. So I'm appealing my case, but now parole's coming up. So my mom and I are putting together my parole packet.

It's everything you're doing while you're in prison, the change that you're making, right? All the classes that you're taking. I took every class I could in prison, Randall. I got involved in everything. Everything. I want them to see this guy that's working on changing himself. I took every class, every chapel class. I did correspondence classes I could do. I got a college degree, so I can't take any bachelor's classes, you know, but I took an HVAC trade class. I became certified in HVAC. I'm not going to fix your AC. Don't worry. But

You're coming out of the house after this, but the AC is working. Yeah, I can't even work on ACs in people's homes in Texas. I got a burglary charge, right? So I've got this parole packet of everything. She's seen the parole packet. I submit that to parole months before. So they've read the packet. They see this guy that's met all this change. My family, they know that my family's come to see me over 150 times. She talks about that.

You had 150 visits, you know? No one gets 150. If you had a visit every year for the years you were in prison, you're one of the richest guys there. Just one visit a year is all you need to be a rich guy in prison. Somebody loves you, right? I had one every weekend pretty much, you know? So the lady for parole was, like I said, she's gone over this whole thing. She said, so here's my question for you. She said, and think hard. Give it some thought. The answer is important.

If you could be remembered for being anything in life, anything at all, she said, tell me what that would be, but give it to me in just one word. Go. I've been living that word the entire time I've been in prison. Man, I knew the answer to her question. Fired her answer back at her without hesitation. Useful. I just want to be useful. Because I think every human being wants to be useful, don't we, Randall? Every single person wants to feel like they have value to add to society. That's when I think...

you want to fix America? Make everybody figure out how they're useful again, right? Figure out what your worth is. And that's what I told her. I said, ma'am, I just want to be useful. I can be useful inside this prison, or I could be useful in the free world finding more coffee beans. And she dismissed me that day. She said, all right, the parole board's going to make a decision on you. They'll let you know as soon as they do. Have a great day, Mr. West. And you can't read faces at that point? Or she's somber and just dead, dead pan. She's stone, stone face, dead pan. You're walking out of there like...

She did ask me a question that made me think. She asked me the poison pill question you don't want to get from a parole voter. Here's the question. Do you think you got too much time? Brandon, you're a lawyer. Think about the answer to this, right? Either way is wrong. If I say I got too much time, they're going to say, well, you haven't accepted responsibility for the things you've done, right? Because in prison, we want people to come around to the concept that I earned this time. I got to do the crime, do the time, right? Right.

But if you say, no, I didn't get too much time, they could say, well, good. Sit here and do some more of that time then. Right. That was a good sentence for you. Stay here and do some more of that life sentence. So when she asked me the question, I told her, I said, ma'am, I don't feel comfortable answering that question. I'm going to tell you why. I just gave her that reasoning. If I say yes, this, if I say no, that. She said, well, I'm going to tell you what I think. I think you got too much time. And I was like, wow, that was an interesting admission from the lady from parole. Right. But my crimes, again, Randall, are property crimes around meth.

No one got hurt. A lot of people lost their property. I stole their sense of security. I was a bad guy, but I wasn't a violent guy. I was locked up with murderers that got eight years for murder. Eight years. I got eight times that. But she's acknowledging. You got too much time. One of the things I found out later on in life, Randall,

When I got out of prison, I went back to school, got a master's degree in criminal justice, and I became a professor at the University of Houston. Congrats, by the way. That's incredible. I'm the only professor on the planet to teach a prisons class at a university who lived in prison. That's it. There's only one guy that's ever done that. But one of the things I learned is that juries will—and I figured this out on my own, but I learned it for a fact. Juries, when they send us to people for a lot of time like that, it's usually one or two reasons or both.

they're either very afraid of the person that they're sentencing or they're very mad at the person they're sentencing well jury wasn't afraid of me they were mad at me the guy that had it all and there's the guy on the phone being the mob boss you know so um but the lady did tell me she thought i got too much time but she told me okay we make a decision we'll let you know i'll tell you the day it happened i got the decision so it was a friday may 1st 2015. i work in the chapel

So for lunch, you can leave your job and go back to your cell and eat your food if you have some food in your locker or something like that. So I go back to the cell. I want to make a phone call. They got day room phones in the prison. So I call my mom up and I call my dad because usually on Fridays I'm calling to find out when they're going to visit me. And I call my mom up. She says, hey, Damon, I got to talk to you about something. And she said, I just went to the parole website. They made a decision on you. Now, Randall, immediately I'm like, because I don't think I'm going to make parole. I'm like, mom, look.

Next year will be different and I'll start apologizing and telling her like I'm sorry. I didn't make it next year. I'll be different Mama, I'll do better. I'll get this done. I'm gonna get out of here at some point and she's like Damon the nightmare is over You're coming home. You make parole and I mean Randall man. I got chills when you're I mean I got I mean I got goosebumps now and I mean first of all, man I'm tearing up now. I start tearing up when she tells me this I'm like

I'm like, mom, don't play with me. You don't have to do this to me. I understand I didn't make it. She's like, Damon, you made it. She said, you're going to, you're coming home. And the floodgates open. I started crying. I sort of bawled like a baby, man. Because I mean, shit, this is over. I'm going to leave this place. Biggest mistake I can make. This is prison, man. Everybody's watching you all the time. One thing you can't do in prison is cry. You can't show, that's its weakness. There's predators everywhere, man.

And I just realized I made the biggest mistake. I'm on this phone call and I'm bawling like a baby. And so I started trying to straighten up, you know, getting all the tears out of my face. And I'm like, mom, I gotta go. I'll call you later. I hang up the phone and I leave the cell. I go back to the chapel. I'm going back to work. I get to the chapel and I talked to the chaplain and a couple of guys who work within the chapel, man, they're all happy for me. Everybody's praying and stuff like that. I said, guys, look, I really screwed up. I'm in the day room, you know, I made this call and I started crying. They're like, oh no. Here's the deal. If you make parole in prison in Texas,

you cannot get any more trouble. They'll take your parole from you. And if you get into a fight that's caught by a guard, there's no legal fighting in prison. Both people that get into a fight, it's the same. Whoever hit first doesn't matter. It's a major case. You have to do it in front of a guard. Now, if someone's got a beef with you, if someone's got a grudge against you, and they find out you make parole, they know they've got a limited amount of time to come get you.

So every enemy I've made, whether I intentionally did it or just did it along the way because I'm this super positive guy that runs around with a smile on his face being a coffee bean, you can make a lot of enemies that way too. The guys are like, oh no, how are you going to go back to the pod? I was like, I don't know, what am I going to do? They said, we got to make up a lie for you. I'm in the chapel, right? We're going to make up a lie. That's what I'm thinking as soon as you are telling me. The chaplain's in on it. Everybody's in on it. We're in the chapel thinking about the best lie that Damon can tell when he get back because now my life is in the line.

So the lie was this. I got a call. My grandmother died. The chapel is going to back me up. He's going to say, yes, we got the call down here. The chapel, your mom got to you first. And so he said, go down there and tell him your grandmother died. Both my grandmothers are dead at this point. So it didn't matter. Right. So the count whistle yells, the count whistle blows. I go back to my pod. I'm walking just kind of stone faces, stone faces. I can go to my bunk and I'm gonna get my shower stuff. I'm gonna take a shower and I'll go back to my bunk. I'm just going to hide out.

So I'm getting my shower stuff out of my bunk and three of these Aaron Brotherhood guys are coming to my bunk. They're coming, man. And one of the guys got a grin on his face. He said, hey, hey, Wes, congratulations on making parole. Man, parole? What are you talking about, man? I said, man, he said, well, you were crying in the day room a while ago. Oh, man, my grandma died. You know, it's terrible, man. My grandmother, 89 years old, passed away yesterday.

Dude, knock it off, man. He was saying one of the other Aaron Brotherhood guys was sitting in the day room, saw me crying, gets on the phone, calls his mom, says, hey, will you check Damon West out on the parole website? Because anybody can check you out, right? And found out I made parole. He says, so we already know about it. Everybody knows about it in the whole unit. Here's the deal. You can't leave your cell, West. Somebody's going to get you at this point. We don't know who it's going to be, but people are going to come after you. You can't leave your cell. How much food do you have in your locker?

And these guys weren't coming to get me. They were coming to help me. So I start pulling out my food that I have. I got two weeks before the prison bus is going to come get me. We know the prison bus is going to get me because I've got to go. I've got a six month program I've got to go to at this minimum security prison. It's a it's called in prison therapeutic community. IPTC. It's a drug treatment community. And they're going to send me to that for six months before I actually walk out of prison. And so, yeah.

We start inventorying my food and I'm breaking it. In prison, I got my diet under control now. I'm eating tuna fish. I'm eating mackerel. I'm eating sunflower seeds, oatmeal with no sugar. I mean, I'm in the best shape of my life at this point now, Randall. I'm in boxing shape.

So we're back, we're sitting there breaking it out and we break out to what it could be every day for two weeks. And I said, I think I got it, guys. And the guys are like, listen, if you don't have enough food, come get one of us. We'll give you some food. Don't go to the chow hall again. Do not go to the chow hall. Chow hall is dangerous for you. Don't go to the rec yard. Go to your job every day at the chapel and come right back, take a shower, get in your bunk, stay here.

So that's what I did for the next two weeks. I didn't go back to the rec yard again. I didn't go to the chow hall again. I can't tell you what they served for any meals for the last two weeks I was in prison. I rationed out my food and ate out of my locker. Thursday night, it was, I think it was May 14th, Thursday, May 14th, the guards coming in. Now remember, I'm in the prison that's just a few miles from where I grew up. Some of the guards that are locked up with me played football with me in high school. They grew up with me. You know, these people know me, man. I'm from the area and I was a football star.

So the guard working to do that night was a guy I played football with in high school, man. He comes up and he's got this red bag. These red bags are, they call them your chain bags. That means you're going somewhere on a trip. He walks up to my cell. They got a little cubicle I live in. He walks up and he drops the chain bag on my bed. He said, this bag's for you, West. You're getting out of here. In the morning, you're on the transport bus, transport bus getting out of here. He said, everybody knows that I just dropped that bag off. He said, bag your stuff up and I'm getting you out of here. I'm going to put you in hiding right now.

So he said, get this bag filled up. Let's get you out of here. Let's get your stuff inventory. So I mean, I started loading my stuff up. He escorts me out. I walk out and I spend the night in this holding cell area, right? The next morning, the prison bus is there to get me. They're escorting me. It's a different guard now because the shifts have changed. Different guard.

They're escorting me out, and this one guy is running across the rec yard at me. Black dude. He's coming for me. And the guards are like on point. But I'm like, whoa, whoa, wait, wait. That's my buddy. That's Sabor. Sabor is one of my cellmates I had in prison. This black Muslim guy. Different black Muslim guy than the guy in Dallas County Jail, right? Sabor. Man, this guy was like a brother to me. In fact, he's still like a brother. We used to talk on the phone all the time in prison. I still talk to Carlos. I talk to Sabor. I talk to all these guys. I put money in their books every month. I take care of them. I'm like their family now.

But that day in 2015, Sabor was running across the rec yard. And I'm like, man, can I go tell my brother goodbye? He said, man, make it quick, Wes. Do not let anything happen to you. I got to get you on this bus. So I run over there and Sabor is like, man, he's out of breath. He's like, he hugs me. And it's very emotional. You know, we're both crying. And he's like, man, I'm really happy for you, Wes. And you get to leave. You get to go home. He said, but I need to know something. He said, are you going to talk about what you talked about when we were in this prison together, when we were cellmates?

What Sabor was asking is, was I going to talk about the stuff that I learned when we were cellmates in prison? When I learned from Sabor about things like racism, about social justice, about the disparities in the system, right, that I explained a while ago. He's like, are you going to talk about that when you get out of here? And I'm like, Sabor, when I get on my feet, man, I will, you know? And I had a good job waiting for me. I had that job at the law firm. They're going to hire me, right? The second day I'm out of prison, I go work at a law firm. But my parents are waiting for me. The law firm's waiting for me.

And I'm like, Sabur, when I get on my feet, I will, man. I promise I will. And man, he looked at me. His words hit me right between the eyes, Randall. He looked at me and he said, good. He said, sometimes they lock up the right guy. And I'm like, what do you mean by that, Sabur? What do you mean the right guy? He said, look at you, man. White, middle class, well-spoken. Two parents are waiting for you. You got a job at a law firm. He said, you're going to change the world. People are going to listen to you, man. You got to talk about what's in here. You can't forget this place when you walk out of here.

I've never forgotten that, Randall. That's why I still go into prisons. That's why I still do what I do. But he said sometimes they lock up the right guy, man. Let's talk about Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Conference. Oh, man, this is a great story. Good question. You've done your homework. But I listen to your podcast. You do a lot of homework, so I'm not surprised. So...

Tell everyone what it was, and then you're hiding out in the bushes, and then you're 0 for 7. Fake plans, fake plans. Fake plan, fake plan, and now you're 0 for 7. You've got one more to go. Okay, so paint the picture for you. When I get out of prison, I know I'm sitting in this incredible story, right, in this great dynamic message of the coffee bean. But the problem is, Randall, there's nowhere for me to share this story. You can't go knock on the door of a high school and say, I just got out of prison. I want to talk to your kids. They'll chase you down the street. They'll chase me, right? So...

I had to find a cop and a judge that would escort me into prisons.

Think about this, man. In 2024, I go all over the world sharing my story. People hire me to speak all the time. I'm one of the most in-demand speakers in America. And one of the best, by the way. Thank you, man. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Whenever I started this thing, I was escorted into high schools and rotary clubs by a cop or a judge, man. The first time I ever spoke, I had a picture of it at a show sometimes. It's these at-risk kids at Port Nations Groves High School, and right behind me is this big judge.

He had to be with me. They couldn't leave me unescorted, right? There weren't a lot of places for me to speak, but I knew I had to get better at speaking. I had to figure out, I've never spoken before. I didn't have any teacher or coach. I had a mirror that was in my parents' spare bedroom. I lived in my parents' spare bedroom the first two years I was out of prison, right?

I mean, think about this for a second. I'm 40 years old. I just got out of prison. I'm on parole for the rest of my life. I got a job at the law firm making just above minimum wage, and I live in my parents' spare bedroom. That would have made a hell of a Tinder profile, wouldn't it? You're an eligible guy. I don't know which way you ladies swipe on that guy, right? But I wasn't on Tinder. I wasn't on the dating app. I was so afraid of all this stuff. And so...

But every night for two years that I wasn't speaking somewhere, I was practicing my presentation in front of that mirror in my parents' spare bedroom. I got in my reps. Anything you want to be good at in life, Randall? You got to get in your reps. You don't just step into the podcast booth without doing your reps, right? You get your work in. You practice, right? You get good at what you do. So I practiced the presentation, and I really thought I was supposed to be speaking in the world of college football because I played college football. The problem was it's been 20 years since I took a snap. These coaches don't know me. I don't know them. But a buddy of mine in Houston calls me up.

It was December, no, January 12th, 2017, 14 months out of prison. And he said, hey, man, get to Houston. Houston's 90 miles away. It's the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Award. They're going to name the best coach of college football, the eighth best coach in this room. He said, I'll sneak you in. I got an extra press pass. He works for the media.

So, man, I drive the 90 miles from Beaumont to Houston. I'm practicing my elevator pitch. What am I going to tell these coaches when I meet them, right? He sneaks me in. I'm running around. I got my best hand-me-down suit on. I'm running around shaking their hands. All these coaches at USC, Wisconsin, Penn State, P.J. Fleck, they're all in this room. And I go up and I meet these coaches and I shake their hand and I give them my pitch of why they should bring me in to talk to their team.

And every coach I meet that night slams the door in my face. They're all telling me no. I'm getting beat up in this room. In one hour, I've been told no seven times. There's only eight coaches in the room. I got a no every eight minutes that night. Now I'm in the corner of Toyota Center. I'm licking my wounds. I'm feeling sorry for myself. And the voice in my head is screaming at me. Go home. What are you doing here, Damon? The voice in my head is telling me I'm an imposter. I think everybody listening can feel like they were an imposter sometime, right? Everybody's heard the imposter voice before.

But man, you know what I quit doing a long time ago, Randall? Listening to myself. And I don't think anybody should listen to themselves because the voice in your head could be fear talking to you. You don't want to listen to fear. Fear is a liar. And that last coach is going to tell you no to your face and you're going home. Last coach, hardest guy to get to the room. His team just beat Alabama two nights before for the national championship. Everybody's trying to get a piece of this guy's time, but I'm not leaving until he tells me no, Randall. So I stalked Dabo Sweeney around that room.

And I look like a nut, man. I'm hiding behind fake plans, trying to ambush Dabo when he walks by. I'm weaving in and out of people. Now security sees me, man. They're going to throw me out of Toyota Center pretty soon. They're chasing me around this room. I finally get in front of Dabo. I give him my best stuff for about 60 seconds and I come up for air. And Dabo's like, get a card on you, man. So I gave him my card. He snatched it from me. He said, I'll check you out. He's gone. Well, that's a no. Looks like a no, feels like a no.

but I felt good about that no. You know what that no represented for me? Me leaving it on the field, man. That's what I learned in sports or what Muhammad said. You don't have to win all your fights. You got to fight all your fights. Anybody that's ever worked a sales job, you knock on every door, you make every call. That's when your day is over. Man, I went home and slept like a baby. Forgot all about that night. Four months later, I get an email from the director of football operations at Clemson, a guy named Mike Dooley. Mike Dooley's email said, "Hey, Damon, Coach Sweeney met you at award show in Houston. He'd love to have you come talk to his team.

Do you have August 1st open? I'm like, Mike, I got every 1st open, brother. I got nothing going on. I'm still talking in front of a mirror, man. So August 1st, 2017, I go speak to the Clemson Tigers, defending national champs of college football. And when I get done with my presentation tonight, Dabo's in my face. And I don't know if you've ever seen Dabo on TV, man. He's as advertised. He's high energy. I need to hook you and Dabo up. It's what I need to do. We love that. We love to meet Dabo. I'll make the introduction today. So Dabo's in my face, man. And

Dabble was like, "Man, I've never heard a story like that before, man." He said, "Have you been to Alabama to talk to their football team?"

I'm like, no, man, I've been to Clemson. The most storied program, except for University of Michigan, greatest school on the planet, but one of the best programs ever. Well, I don't disagree with that. One of the best programs ever. So he said, have you been to Alabama? I'm like, no, man, I've been to Clemson, dude. I haven't been anywhere. He said, well, I'll just text Nick Saban. We'll see what happens. Next day, Saban's ops guy calls me up. Hey, man, Dabo called Coach Saban. Coach Saban can't wait to hear your story. How's August 21st, 7.30 p.m. work for you?

Pretty good. I see my calendar can handle that, right? Just like that, Dabo Sweeney starts kicking open every door to college football. He gets on the phone. Kirby Smart calls. Lincoln Riley calls. Chip Kelly, Lane Kiffin, Ryan Day. Sorry, no Michigan. Michigan never called. But most college football teams in America are bringing me in to speak to their team. They want to hear the coffee bean message, right? He's telling everybody, you've got to hear this guy's story. You've got to hear his story about the coffee bean. But the real magic of my life was yet to happen.

It was one year after their presentation at Clemson. And I get a phone call out of the blue in August of 2018. And on the other end of my phone is this guy named John Gordon. John Gordon, the energy bus guy. I follow John on Twitter, man. He's my inspiration. And I'm like, John, I know who you are, man. How do you know who I am? He said, Dabo Sweeney. He said, I just got done speaking to Clemson's football team. And I'm in the office of Dabo afterwards. And for 30 minutes, Dabo tells me your entire life story. He said he told me the story of the coffee bean.

John said, "Damon, the world needs a coffee bean message, Damon. Let's deliver this message to the world." He said, "Well, you write a book with me. We'll call it The Coffee Bean." The summer of 2019, 10 years after I first heard that story from Muhammad in a jail cell in Dallas County Jail, the book, The Coffee Bean, comes out, Randall, and it took the world by storm. It was a bestseller here in America for like four to six weeks. It gets a global publishing deal. It starts showing up in every language in the world, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, French, Italian, German, Korean, Vietnamese.

And then in 2020, a global pandemic hits. The entire world becomes this pot of boiling water. And now the entire world is searching for a message to get them through it. The coffee bean. My life took off like this. I can't even explain to you. I mean, this is an entrepreneur podcast too. I go from, you know, making...

$150,000 a year speaking to making a million a year, then two million a year, then 2.8 million a year speaking, going out on stages and sharing this message all over the place because the world needed the message, right? Right message, right time. But it all goes back to that one night in Houston, Texas, that January 12th, 2017, when I had those seven no's and I almost walked out the door because the voice in my head told me I wasn't good enough. It told me to leave, told me I didn't belong in that room. Randall, if I walk out that door that night,

We're not having this conversation today. The world doesn't have the coffee we mentioned. I tell people all the time, you don't quit. You don't give up. You don't not ask your question. The only question you know the answer to in life is the one you don't ask. That's a no every time, right? Wayne Gretzky may have said it best. You miss 100% of the shots you do not take. Take your shots in life, man. So let's talk about that. There's so many things that I want to... Oh, can I add this one thing that just happened? Yeah. This happened literally two days ago.

Every year since I got told no by those other coaches in that room, I have called them up. They're operations guy every single year until I've gotten one yes after another. The other day, I just got the yes from Penn State, the last one on the list. In August, I will speak to the last coach that told me no that night. Seven years later, I finally got all yeses from that room in Houston, Texas. Amazing. Congratulations. Yeah. That's incredible.

I do a lot of coaching, mentoring, summer interns, as you know. We have 36 interns every summer. I've got 7,400 applications this year. It's very hard to get a job with you, man. It's a teaching internship. And we want people who've got the work ethic, the drive, the hunger, and are willing to do the nitty gritty. Because a lot of people in today's world don't want to do the nitty gritty. They don't want to do the tough work. But every intern...

And most young professionals, even people who are successful, don't have the guts to go up to someone at a conference. And, you know, these are people who are very famous people, right? This is the course of the year. There's a circle around these people. Yeah. Right. So you got to you got you got three to five seconds, maybe 10 max to go in and do your pitches. People are afraid to do this. They're afraid. Right.

What's your direct message? If you look into the camera and you tell everybody, you're a college student, you're a young professional, there's a CEO over there, you haven't met the CEO before, you haven't met the founder of the company. Look in the camera. This is how I made my career and this is how you made your career. But tell everyone what the message there is. Here's the message. Go and define what a bad day looks like, right?

Let's define what a bad day is. A bad day, let's say it's when a marriage fails, a job gets lost. Maybe you fail a class, you're in your college, you had a bad grade, whatever. Someone dies, something happens to your kids, something happens to your pet. These are bad days. Let's define what a bad day looks like.

Anytime you think you're having a bad day, ask yourself, is it really a bad day? Is it one of those days, right? Because if it's not one of those days, then my day is just not that great. And I can turn this thing around pretty quickly, right? I just got to change the way I think about the day in front of me. When I'm in the room that night in Houston, Texas, I had survived prison. I've been through something way worse than this. But I took the time to apply the perspective. Because if I don't apply the perspective that night...

The odds of me succeeding is so daunting. I'm going to walk out that room and listen to the voice of fear in my head

But I stopped and I applied the perspective. I'm like, Damon, this isn't a bad day. Even if this guy tells you no, it's just a no. It doesn't hurt. It's not like you're getting beat up in the day room again. Define what your bad days look like and compare your days to those days. Now, also, it's your mindset. It's always about you. It's never going to be about you. It's never going to not be about you is what I'm saying. It's your mindset. It's like John Gordon talks about this. Some days you're sitting in traffic and the traffic bothers you, right? Some days you sit in the same traffic and it doesn't bother you at all.

Is it the traffic or is it you? It's always you. It's always your mindset that you're in and the situation you're in. You've got to control. There's only four things you have control over. You control what you think. You control what you say. You control what you feel. And you control what you do. And if it's not one of those four things, you don't control it. But you have to focus on the things you can control and let go of the things you cannot control.

The worst thing that can happen is they say no, and then you come to live another day. And the more people say no, the easier it is to keep coming back, trying to find a yes. And there's always a lesson to learn from failure. Failure gets such a bad rap, right? But some of the best lessons I've learned in life are when I've failed. Failed completely. I went to prison. You know, I failed so bad in life, I got sentenced to life. A jury threw me away. But I learned a lot of lessons while I was there.

You can learn a lot from rock bottom. Rock bottom is a good place to build a new life for them. It's a great foundation. So you talk about what makes people successful. One of the things that's made me successful is my preparation. Extreme preparation is a term that I've coined, and I'm going to write a book on that. I am writing a book on that. You talked about practicing in front of the mirror your speech, and I've heard your speech even today. You're articulate. I mean, you got it down. It's motivational.

How important has extreme preparation been to your success? And what's your advice to people who say, OK, you know, I got a speech. I got a corporate presentation. I'm going to meet with my boss. You know, I'll wing it for 10, 15 minutes, 60 minutes. Yeah. So extreme preparation, you're the best at it. You could write a master's class on it. In fact, you should do a master's class on it sometime. I'll take it.

because you're very prepared. But I think one of the biggest things in life that, like, one of the separators I've had is my grit, my hard work. This is the same guy you're looking at when you played high school football, this little 5'10 guy that wanted to get a Division I scholarship. Yeah. Outworked everybody. I'll outwork you. Doesn't matter who it is, I'm going to outwork you. And you're going to have to kill me to stop me, right? If I get it in my mind, I'm going to do something, I do it. But...

A big thing in life is doing what you say you're going to do. Your word matters. Your character matters. That's a big thing. Another thing in life is relationships. Relationships are everything, Randall.

I'll tell you another story about relationships. Go back to that story with Dabo and John. I was with Dabo a couple months ago. He came to see my new house that I just built because I call it the house Dabo built. I got the John Gordon pickleball court and the house that Dabo built. I was going to ask you about the pickleball court. Yeah, but Dabo came to my house, and he was just blown away at what my wife and I have done. And I had a bunch of people there waiting to meet Dabo, all the people we help out in the community, the youth sports programs that we sponsor and all this other stuff because of Dabo building.

believing in me. I believe in you, right? And so I fly back with Dabo to Clemson that night and he's on the plane. He said, have I ever told you the story about that day that John and I were in the office and I told him about you for the first time? I was like, no, I've never heard your side of this. Just that John called me that day and said, I was with Dabo. He said, yeah, damn. And he said, so John gets done speaking to the team. We go in the office and I pull my keys out of my pocket, throw my keys on the table.

Now, I had given Dabo a little wooden coffee bean keychain the year before, just as a little memento to say thank you. I didn't have much money. These little wooden coffee bean keychains weren't much on the internet. Gave one to him. I gave one to this ops guy, Mike Dooley, right? Dabo pulls out his keys and throws them on the table. John Gordon's eye catches that wooden coffee bean keychain. John said, hey, man, what's that thing on your keychain? Dabo said, oh, that's a coffee bean, man. He said, do you know the story of the coffee bean? John's like, no, I've never heard the story of the coffee bean.

Well, we just had a guy named Damon West come talk to our team. Let me tell you the story of Damon West and tell you the story of the coffee bean. If I don't give Davo that coffee bean keychain,

We're not having this conversation today. But I wanted to build a relationship with Dabo, so I wanted to show gratitude to Dabo for what he did. And it doesn't have to be something big, man. It could be just like, you know, how do you show gratitude? How do you build a relationship? And some of the relationships, this is to your interns, this is to everybody, man. Some of the relationships you want to build in life, you're going to have to build them from a place of less than zero. Not everybody you call up for a podcast wants to do a podcast with you, right? Many don't. Right. Right.

I hope everybody does. I hope you get on the train. And for all those of you who said no, I'm still coming after you to make it a yes. And you should. But here's the thing. You've got to build a relationship sometimes from a place to less than zero. What I'm telling you is this, that there's going to be people you want to build a relationship with, whether it's business or podcast or whatever, and maybe they've had such a bad experience with someone that's doing what you're doing. Yeah.

Maybe you work for a company and it's someone that used to work for your company. They wore your same logo, but they're not even there anymore because they were so bad. But they burned bridges everywhere they went, right? But people don't want to make... Maybe you're a sales, a door-to-door salesperson, D2D, right? And how many people have a negative mindset, a preset bias of salespeople, right? You've got to find a way to build a relationship from a place of less than zero. And it can be done. I know it can be done. I'm an ex-con, Randall. You think people are just dying to hang out...

You think people are dying to hang with an ex-con when I got out of prison? No. How many ex-cons that came before me have burned it to the ground because of their behavior after they got out of prison? They go back to prison. About 85% in the first three years, right? There's a number for that called recidivism. I had to build bridges and roads that weren't there for an ex-con like me. Now I go into Fortune 100s. I go into masterminds. I go into schools, athletic departments, college and pro departments.

But I had to start from a place of less than zero to do most of that. You can do it too. Everybody can build a relationship with somebody in front of them. You just got to be willing to put in the work. And you mentioned something very important, which is these little mementos, actual physical, tangible things to provide someone that is a memory, it's thoughtful, it says, okay, you know, Damon West gave me this.

I teach this and I coach this, right? You really? Oh, I'm very big on this. I said, "Personal research and development budget." So I say to people, I said, "All right, how much are you willing to pay for that meeting? Student, what are you talking about?" I said, "Would you pay for a meeting with someone who you want to meet?" They're like, "What are you talking about?" I said, "Okay, you prepare for that job interview for 10 hours, 20 hours. You write the cover letter. You do this, you do that."

And it may go in the trash, but you can send them a little trigger. You're not bribing them for something, but maybe send them. Some guy came in, wanted a job, bombed the interview, knew he bombed it. And then he sent me a letter with a little Michigan leather football. He said, I am really sorry. I blew it. I want a second chance. I knew that day that I was hiring that guy. Wow. Just like that.

Wow. And it's just like that. He's not bribing me. He probably spent $25 on this football. But I became his boss, his mentor. I paid him a salary to put food on the table. Right. And it's like people don't do this. Here's one more. That's crazy. So my friend Luke...

Hockey league player, didn't make it to the pros, played in the minors until he was 26 years old. Comes out doing commercial real estate. Now this is during pandemic, it's booming, you can't get a warehouse and he's a guy just making cold calls. No one's calling me back. I said, Sammy, how much are you willing to spend for a meeting? He said, what are you talking about? I said, let's make a personal R&D budget that you're going to spend. It's $1,000, it's $2,000. I said, I'm going to use that money to get a meeting.

He's still, again, people got to wrap their head around this. This is a new concept. And I said, all right, here's what you're going to do. You know, would you pay 50 bucks for a meeting? Would you pay 25 bucks? I don't know. I said, let's settle on 50 bucks, okay? You're going to go to Starbucks. You're going to get a half pound of coffee. You're going to get a basket. You're going to get two mugs. You're going to start FedExing these people with a nice note. I'm Luke. I'd love to sit down and have a cup of coffee with you better in person.

That's awesome. He fucking killed it. That's so wild, man. He smoked it. You know, this led to tens of thousands of dollars in commissions. I think his second year in business. I mean, it's a young kid. He made over $500,000 his second year in business.

As a professional. That's incredible. I'm sitting here with my wheels are spinning like, how can I do this with what I do, you know? Yeah. And the more, and I'm thinking about it, like the more success and the busier I've gotten in life, I've gotten away from that thing of giving these personal mementos that I did in the beginning. I need to get back to that, Randall. I mean, it's...

Dana White did my show. Great episode, too. I loved it. Thank you so much. I think it's gone viral. You did so much research, you freaked him out. Yeah. A lot of my guys are freaked out. Mike Posner called me creepy at some point. He ran the 5K, and I knew his best time in high school. 1801, he ran the 5K. That's better than my... No.

No, okay. Yeah. I was thinking about my best time. I was like, no, that's good though. So Dana does my show and I think, okay, I mean, he was generous to me. I interviewed him at this conference, a big conference, Scale Global Summit in Vegas last May. Amazing conference. We're going to have it again. Well, now we're going to have it. They're going to have it again next May. Tell them I want to speak at it.

You are going to speak at it. It's an unbelievable conference. We had, and I keep saying we, I'm not even a part of the conference. Kelly O'Connor runs a conference. She found it. She does an amazing job. But they had, man, they had everybody there from, in the political spectrum, they had Boris Johnson, Hillary Clinton, they had William Barr, they had Dana, Steve Aoki, Mark Wahlberg. They had...

biohackers, I mean it was one of the best conferences I've ever been to and Kelly, this is my show, she said, "Hey, I love your show. You want to go interview someone on stage?" I've never interviewed anyone on stage. You know, I've got my podcast, she likes it, so go on stage, I'm interviewing Dana, he cries on my show, people love it and my son's a huge UFC fan, so when we're done, you know, I said, "Hey,

Take a video for my son. Charlie shoots a video. Hey, man, Charlie, I can't believe your dad didn't let you come here, but I'll tell you what I'm going to do. You can pick whatever fight. I'll read this. Yeah, it's on my story, which is amazing. So I said, Dana, will you do my show? So he does my show. It took 11 months, but he finally did my show. We did it a few years ago. The episode came out, I think, a month ago. And I want to do something really nice for him.

And so Matt Hickerson, my right-hand guy, superstar, says, all right, here's what we're going to do. And he finds Dana, his addiction, his love of fighting, professional fighting, came from boxing. Marvelous Marvin Haggard and Sugar Ray Leonard. Sugar Ray Leonard, yeah. One of the biggest fights in the history of boxing. And he saw us fight on TV, and it lit him up. So we got him.

a signed ticket stuff by both of those guys. Wow. From way back when. I was 20 years old, something like that. And we gave it to him. I gave it to him as a thank you after he did my show. And it's these really special gifts. And yes, it was expensive. Yeah. It was very expensive. But Dana has...

been a great friend, brought value to my life. I think he's a great guy. I've learned a ton from him and I was very grateful that he did my show and I knew it was gonna help me professionally and it really has. - Yeah, that's incredible. - People gotta be thoughtful. Don't just send something generic. - Correct. - All right, let's talk about amazing people. So you got John Gordon who calls you up out of the blue and he actually got you in on a book deal

and gave you some financial percentage that he didn't have to do. So when John calls me up that day, he says, hey, let's write a book. We'll call it The Coffee Bean. Because he said, Damon, the world needs a coffee bean message. This is before the pandemic. John said, Damon, the world needs a coffee bean message. Let's deliver this message to the world. My first response, Randall, was,

John, you're John Gordon, man. You don't need me. You can have the coffee bean. Go write the book. I'll buy it. It'll be a great book. Enjoy. Have a nice life. John's like, whoa. He said, Damon, look, God showed me the cover of the book already. Your name's on it. Let's listen to God. Let's do this book together. He said, look, I'll tell you what. I'll split everything with you 50-50. And at the time, John's got much bigger book deals now. But at the time, that book deal, he got $100,000 advance for the book. Yep.

He said, so look, you do it with me. I'll give you half the advance and we'll split all the profits 50-50 from here on out. And so we turned the manuscript in. I got my check in the mail for $50,000 and it came in. My then girlfriend, but now wife, Kendall, when the check came in in 2019 for $50,000, she said, I know what you're about to do with that. I was like, yep, I've been looking forward to this. And

I called my parents up. I said, hey, y'all going to be good. I live with Ken all the time. We just got in our first house and it's more money than I've ever seen. I mean, this is a $50,000 check to me. I called my parents up. I said, hey, y'all going to be home? I got to bring something, drop it off. They live about 10 minutes away. My dad's like, yeah, yeah, we're going to be at home.

When I was going to my trial, my parents, who I'd made a colossal error in life, made a lot of bad choices. They still, remember my mom said she loved me unconditionally? They cashed in their retirement. They cashed in $50,000. My parents didn't make a lot of money either, Randall. They didn't make a lot of money at all. But they spent exactly $50,000 on my legal offense. And when I got out of prison, I told them I'd pay them back. I'm giving them like $125 a month at that point to try to pay back. I think I've paid back $3,000 the entire time I've been out of prison.

But I drove over to their house that day, and my dad's like, hey, man, I thought you had something. Where is it? I pulled that check out. I gave it to him. He started crying, man. He's like, Damon, I don't know what to say. I didn't think we'd ever see this money again. I said, man, mom told me debts demand to be paid, and I owe you all that debt. There's your $50,000 back. John Gordon gave me the ability to repay my parents that money back. In fact, when my dad died last year,

One of the best things I can tell you, Randall, about that experience is that there's no regrets. He got to see me turn it all around. And then one of the last things he asked me is take care of your mom. And I'm building my mom a house now. You know, I mean, it's just how great is that, by the way? Oh, dude, it's incredible, man. I mean, just to be in a position. I mean, it's sometimes it feels like I'm a time traveler, like to be eight and a half years ago. I was living in a 10 by 12 prison cell serving a life sentence in prison.

My wife and I just built a house. My little stepdaughter's closet is 12 by 12. You know, it's like I've measured the thing, whatever they're building. I'm like, this is bigger than my prison cell. But that's how great life is. But one thing was incomplete. And John and I...

We hooked up. We've done three books on the coffee bean. One is a kid's book too. And it's been very successful. John has believed in me, man. John's like my guy, man, my mentor. I wouldn't be where I am without John Gordon. And if John and John will tell you this, if I need Damon, pick up the phone, I'll call him. He'll call me anything he needs. I'm there. Right. Um,

One of the things that was big on my list to do, because we were talking about these different things, and I was talking about relationship building, doing what you say you're going to do, telling your interns and people in college that, everybody in general, the qualities to live by, integrity and accountability are so big, right? Integrity is who you are when no one else is watching, and accountability is

Man, that's hard to find in America right now. Because true accountability looks like this. We learned this in the 12 steps. You make a mistake, you own your mistake, and then you change the behavior that caused the mistake. So we're not making the same mistake over and over again. Because people get tired of seeing that, right? So one of the things I had to do when I got out of prison was find Muhammad. I've got to find this guy. I've got these books, the coffee bean, this message has come out. So I get out of prison.

2015, I go to Dallas County Jail and said, hey, I'm trying to find my friend Muhammad. Dallas County Jail was real nice about it. They're like, that's his Muslim name, Randall. I don't know what his real name is, right? Muhammad Ali. Used to be a guy named Cassius Clay, right? When a person converts to Islam, they get rid of their real name, take on a Muslim name. The only name he told me he went by was Muhammad. But I can't find Muhammad by Muhammad. They're like, we need a real name or a birthday. So I had to hope that one day he would find me. Here's how he finally found me.

Two years ago, I got a letter from an inmate at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Randall, I get a lot of letters from inmates now. Men and women that are incarcerated in the American prison system all over, they all write me, because you know who I am to every man and woman in prison? Hope. I'm Hope. I'm the dream. They can touch the dream if they see Damon West. I'm Andy Dufresne from Shawshank. Andy Dufresne was Hope. That's what the whole movie about Shawshank is, Hope, man.

And I love my role as Andy, man. I write all these inmates back, but this letter was different. There was no return address, had one sentence. Find James Lynn Baker and you find Muhammad. That's the clue. It took me seven years to get that clue right. Go to Dallas, get a private investigator. First thing we found was his criminal record. And it matched everything he said in county jail, in and out of prison his entire life. All we got to do is find his current address and I go see my friend again.

But we couldn't find his current address, Randall, because James Landbaker II, Muhammad, he died on May 9th, 2017 in Dallas, Texas of an opiate overdose. Oh, he's a drug addict just like me, but he never got to a program recovery. He never made it to 12 steps. There's a lesson there too, Randall. This guy sat on the coffee he messaged his entire life, but he could not apply it in his own life. You could sit on all the knowledge and information in the world. You could read all the best self-help books,

But if you can't apply the knowledge, the knowledge does you no good. If you can't apply the knowledge. So now that I knew who he was, I had the private investigator go find his family. I said, I got to honor this guy somehow because Randall, we all know I'm not here without him, right? That old man tells me that's the Warren County Jail.

So we found his family. He's got three living sisters. One of his sisters was the first Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader ever, this woman named Von Seal Baker, a black woman, 1972, first Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader. Yeah, Von Seal Baker. You can look her up. There's a Texas Monthly story about her that the PI found. So he's got three living sisters, Visha, Von Seal, and Vanessa Baker. Called up these ladies one night. I told them a story about the time that I met their brother in county jail.

The message he gave me and what I was able to do with that message both in prison and out of prison. And I told his sisters, I said, I don't know what your feelings are about your brother and the choices he made in life. But let me tell you something about your brother that I know that you don't know. Your brother impacted at least one person while he was on this planet. Me.

And I'm going to impact the entire planet with the message he gave me. I said, what high school did y'all go to growing up? Because I got an idea how to honor your brother. You know, when James and I were in county together, he told me it was from the poorest, most inner city, urban part of Dallas. And the sisters confirmed all that. They said Dallas Lincoln was the name of the high school they went to. Dallas Lincoln is as inner city as you get in Dallas. That's South Dallas, Randall. That is inner city, inner city of Dallas, right? So I said, great, here's what I want to do.

Every year for the rest of my life, I'm putting $10,000 into a trust for a scholarship in your brother's name. We'll call this thing the James Lynn Baker II Bia Coffee Bean Scholarship. And I would love it if your family picked that winner every year. So every year, one little boy or one little girl that grows up in South Dallas, they get a better chance at life through an education because these two guys met up in county jail back in 2009. Randall, the sisters took me up on it. And now we've picked two winners of the scholarship. One of the winners was this little girl named Megan.

Megan's mother's a schoolteacher. Her dad's a disabled veteran. Megan's sitting in classes at Texas A&M right now. Megan's going to be an engineer one day. Finally found Muhammad, Randall. Took seven years to find this guy. Took seven no's at night in Houston to get to the first yes I needed in life, right, with Dabo Sweeney. Took seven years to get out of her prison. Took me seven years to turn all those no's into a yes that night in Houston, Texas, with Penn State now coming up.

Life is about getting a lot of no's, man, and getting turned down. Some of your goals are going to take longer than others, but you can't quit. You cannot give up before the miracle happens. There's also something in life called luck. And I think every successful person that I know, whether they admit it or not, there's a lot of luck in their success. I believe that. Ed Milat calls you up and he says, hey, you want to be on my show? No, Ed didn't call me up. He didn't call you? Oh, no, this is another great story. This is a great story. So

I want to get on Ed's show bad, and I don't know how to get on Ed's show. The only way I can contact Ed is through Instagram Messenger. And this guy, I know him, Ed. Ed's a good friend of mine. I get 9,000 messages a day through DMs, right? John Gordon becomes friends with Ed Milet.

John, man, will you talk to Ed about giving the show?" John talks to him. They're very close. Yeah, they're very close. So it didn't happen right then. Dabo Sweeney becomes friends with him and Ed is on his story talking about his daughter goes to Clemson. She just graduated a couple weeks ago. And so he's like, he's on the story saying, "I'm going to see Bella at Clemson. I'm going to meet Dabo Sweeney." "Well, I called Dabo up." "Dabo, man, Ed Bylet's going to talk to you. Will you talk to Ed about me and see if I can get on a show?"

Dabo calls me up that night. Hey, man, I talked to Ed. I think it's going to happen. It still doesn't happen yet. But I keep persistently sending Ed videos and stuff like that. Hey, Ed, I'd like to come on. Here's what I want to talk about. Stuff like that. DMs. DMs, DMs. Yeah, I don't have his cell phone number. So it was... You have it now. Yeah, I have it now. We're friends now. And so he's a really... He's a great guy. I've known him for 10 years. He's a good friend. He came on my show. He did? Yeah. That doesn't surprise me. He's such a good guy. Yeah, very early when...

You appreciate every single person that helps you. I mean, when we started our tech company, I remember every couch I slept on. I remember everyone that helped me. Yeah. And he helped me on my show. He came on early. Well, he let me on. He's finally let me on. Everything to do with John Gordon, get me on that show.

It was May 12th, 2022. I get a DM from him on Instagram. All right, Damon West, May 18th, 4.30 p.m., Sirius XM Studios in Los Angeles. There's your window of opportunity. Here's my producer. Can't wait to see you on the show. And I show up that day on May 18th, which is, you know, May 18th is a big day for me. It's the day I was sentenced to life in prison back in 2009. May 18th, 2019 is the day I got married for the first time, 10 years to the day ago.

I was sentenced to life imprisonment. Or my wife says you went from one life sentence to another, right? But May 18th, 2022, I sat down across from Ed Milet. And man, that podcast was revolutionary for me. I mean, it plugged me into a world of people I didn't know that didn't know me. Millions of people listened to that podcast. And I think the first day I got a thousand DMs. My speaking business changed.

took off like that. So many people that listen to Ed's show bring speakers in and of course they heard the story, man. You sit there and listen to the story and you're like, man, there's not a lot of stories out there that have the amount of lessons that are in this story right here, right? Because the place where I had to learn these lessons from

It's the place that people are most curious about too, right? I mean, people love stories that have certain elements in it, right? We love stories about overcoming adversity. We love the underdog journey. We love sports stories. Sports are great. Sports sells in America. Sports is a great uniting of this country. We love stories about prison. I got them all. Here's why we love stories about prison, Randall, because you can't go into a prison. There's only two ways to get into a prison. You either work at the prison or you live in the prison. And so-

People love prison stories. And if you have those elements like that, like I have in my story, it opens people up to a whole world. Think about the things we talked about here today. I talked about crime and punishment. We talked about race and disparity. We had conversations here that you don't see people having a lot of times, right? But there's a way to have it. And when you have a vehicle like this to have it on, that's why Sevor said sometimes they lock up the right guy.

Because here's this guy, you know, I went into an environment as a white guy, white middle class guy that I've never seen before and opened my eyes with so many things. I was a sober observer and a listener and a learner while I was in there. And I saw a lot of things that I'll never be able to unsee. And I wanted people to take me serious to the point that I went out and got a master's degree in criminal justice. So I wasn't just some guy that went to prison and got out. Let me tell you what I learned in prison. No, I'll go become educated. You'll call me Professor West and I'll tell you all about it, you know.

So it's about putting the work. I think one of the things that make people successful is modeling yourself after different people. Add

I've known for 10 years. I saw him grow his business. I think he's one of the best, if not the best motivational speaker in the world. He's incredible. You're up there too. Ed's better than me. He's actually the reason that we're here because we go through and we look at the top shows and see who they've had on his guest. Wow. And so I went on his list. That's how you got to me? That's how I got to you. So I DM'd you. That's so crazy, man. That is crazy. So I've never shared that with you. I'm going to text you when I get done, man. I'm

That blows me away. Thank you. And now we're good friends. Yes. You're on my show and John has become a very good friend. In fact, when David and I leave here today, John Gordon is playing pickleball at my house right now and we're going to go play pickleball with John. And John's a mentor to me as well. It's been great. He's been very helpful to my show. Before I finish today, I want to go ahead with some...

One answer questions. Fill in the blank to excellence is what I call it. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is... It has to be one word? One word. One word. Yeah. Useful. My number one professional goal in life is... Serve. My number one personal goal is... Also serve. My biggest regret is... Muhammad. Well, not finding Muhammad. I don't... That's not my biggest regret. My biggest regret would be... I don't know if I can sum it up into one word. But I mean...

Well, you could say my biggest fear. I mean, it could be one sentence. Addiction. Let's just say addiction. Yeah. My biggest fear is? Apathy. The craziest thing that's happened in my life is? Freedom. The funniest thing that's happened in my life is? Let me think. The funniest things that have happened in my life. Let's come back to that. Okay. The one thing I've dreamt about doing for a long time but haven't is? Skiing. I've never been skiing.

You've got to make it happen. And I'm an athletic guy. I think I can pick it up pretty well. If you can go back in time and give your 21-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be? But it's more than one word. Ask for help. We're going to go back. The funniest thing that ever happened to me in my life is? I think that, like, so, like, there's so many things that I've experienced now, Randall, being a husband and a stepfather, because I never thought that was possible to me. Like, I laid in my bunk in prison and I thought...

There's no way I ever find somebody to love me. And if I find someone to love me, their family won't love me. I mean, who wants the baggage of this guy? And there's just a lot of collection of funny things that have happened being attached to having a family and being a father. I mean, a stepfather because I have a stepdaughter. And yeah, so I don't know if I can just sum it up to one thing. It's just being a family guy has opened me up to a lot of funny things in life. It's been fun. If you could meet one person in your life, who would it be? Meet one person in life?

Alive or dead? We'll go one on one. One and then the other. First person, uh, be one person alive. Um...

I'd really like to meet Taylor Swift because my little stepdaughter wants to meet her. So I've got to find a way to get Taylor Swift's attention for her. So I would use mine up for Claire. I'd meet Taylor Swift. That's awesome. Yeah. We went to her concert in Nashville. And like, Randall, I'm one of those guys that believe I can do anything. I can make anything happen. And I can usually pick up the phone and eventually, through one degree or two degrees of separation, I can make it happen. Right.

Two of my people that I know in this world, in the recording world, they know Taylor Swift's people and they both got back to me individually and said, she's not meeting with anybody because of COVID stuff. It was last year, but COVID wasn't going on, but she just wasn't meeting with people because she didn't want to get exposed to people. So I couldn't take her. And when we were in Nashville, I couldn't take her to meet Taylor Swift. I was like, I'll make it happen.

She's on tour right now. My daughters are in Europe. They just graduated college. I'm going to meet them in Portugal in 10 days. They're flying to London next week to meet... Not to meet her, but to go to her concert in London. It's such a good show. Yeah. She's such a good entertainer, man. She's the best. She was... My little stepdaughter and my wife were both in tears at the concert. Every woman in the stands was in tears. And it's just...

I understand the draw to Taylor Swift. One of my friends in life, and we recently became friends, we're not like best buds or anything like that, is Andy Reid. And I had dinner with Andy Reid last week. And Andy's son is a good friend. Britt Reid, his son, is a good friend of mine. And Britt told me that his dad said, best compliment I could ever receive. His dad said, I really like Damon a lot. He thinks like a quarterback.

Coolest compliment, right? That's a great one. Oh my God. It was so good. You got that one. Tom Brady called it. Yeah. So it's awesome. Um, but yeah, man. So being a husband and stepfather, uh, opens you up to a lot of stuff. And like, I would burn up the, the meeting somebody on, on Clara, uh, to meet Taylor Swift and someone dead, uh,

I want to go back and meet someone from ancient Egypt and find out how they did all they did. It had to be somebody from that time, 35,000 years ago. Because I don't think these things are like 4,000 years old, pyramids and all that. You listen to Rogan? He talks about this sometimes. No, I don't listen to Rogan. But pyramids are... But I want Joe Rogan on my show, by the way, just as an FYI. Sorry I haven't listened, but I do want you on my show. But I want to find out why they could do the things they did back then that we can't do now. Like, I'd have to meet somebody from that period.

So have it explained to me. How did y'all do all this? How did y'all make, you know, these 7,000 ton blocks and stack them up? And none of those blocks are the same size for the pyramids and stuff like that. I'm not a conspiracy nut, but I just, I think there's so much we don't understand about ancient Egypt that they understood then and we can't figure out now. We're going to end it on this.

Did you ever think in your darkest moment sitting in that cell with a life sentence that you'd be out today with your dream home? By the way, great shoe closet. I saw that shoe closet. Man, I wish I had all the room for my shoes. By the way...

We got shoe games going on here, you know? Jordan 3s. Yep. Travis Scott. But did you ever think sitting in that darkest moment and you've got life in prison, you're never getting out to where you are today, dream house, buy your mama house, making $3 million a year, being one of the most coveted motivational speakers in the world, and what's the message to people? Look in the camera and tell people what that message is. Yeah, first of all, never, never expected to be here in life, but...

Man plans and God laughs. And be careful about the goals that you set. Make sure you're setting them high enough, because if you live a life that's full of serving other people, being useful to society again, and putting in the work, then you can accomplish every goal you set. So don't set your goals too low in life. And Randall, I would also tell you this, that I know that in life we get it.

Usually you get one chance in life. I've gotten an amazing second chance in life. And I wake up every single day with a get-to attitude. Like, I get to do this for a living. And I mean, I've got...

I tell my wife every day, I can't believe this is my life, Randall. I can't believe it because I get a chance to go out there and impact the entire world with a message that was given to me and change people's lives. I've seen people's lives get changed by the coffee message. And it just, it blows me away that I could be a conduit to that. But you have to be open to be a conduit of that kind of stuff, man. Share your gifts with others. And you are, and you're...

So inspirational motivation one of the best guests I've ever had best story ever appreciate that you've had some great guests and and you've been a mentor to me just even watching your progress because I want to go out and do Corporate speaking and I'm working on my speech as well. I've got the mirror. We rent sound stages, you know to do it It's been great to watch all your success man. I've seen it just explode. I'm so happy for you You and you send me text late at night and so yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, I text you

Regularly, man, this is great. I respond back as quick as I can to you, man. But, you know, you're waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning, 3.30 in the morning, you know, driving three hours from airports in little...

cities that there's no direct flies taken sure three five but it's it's uh i admire you you know tremendously now let's get the f out of here and go play some pickleball let's go do it man look if people want to find me though man my website tell everyone sorry yeah my website is damonwest.org d-a-m-o-n w-s-t.org and instagram and twitter or x is at damon west seven and

Books are anywhere. Books are mainly Amazon, Barnes & Noble, places like that. But Amazon runs the world, so you can find anything I've written on Amazon. But DamonWest.org for speaking.